Postal Service to Ask Justice Department to Intervene in Fight to Ban Employees From Taking Time Off to Campaign

On Thursday, Government Executivereported that the Postal Service lost a union appeal challenging a new policy the agency had implemented to ban its workers from taking unpaid time off to campaign for political candidates.

By Friday morning, the Postal Service announced it was gearing up for a fight. The agency said it would challenge that decision, awarded by a third-party arbitrator, in federal court. It will ask the Justice Department to intervene on its behalf.

Paul Hogrogian, president of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, said Johnson’s “political pressures” pushed USPS to issue the policy changes in the first place.

"Those changes were made unilaterally, and without any bargaining or even consultation with the major postal unions," Hogrogian said. "Arbitrator Goldberg easily found that these unilateral changes violated the national agreement, and ordered that they be rescinded." Hogrogian predicted the unions will begin negotiations over the issue in the coming weeks.